With the picture mixed, investors worried about the debilitating affect of discounting. The sales rack may be a good thing for shoppers, but companies make less money or even lose money by selling cheap to make room for spring fashions. Discounting can strip away excess inventory. But deep discounting can cut into profit margins. As a result of this unchecked fear, the

. The blue-chip retailer announced today that January same-store sales rose 6%, and that net sales rose to $16.7 billion from $14.7 billion. But despite that apparently good news, Wal-Mart took a nosedive along with the rest of the sector. It fell $2.36 to $52.30 -- the third-biggest drag on the Dow.

earnings release after Tuesday's closing bell. Most sectors were within a percentage-point move of the break-even point as investors sort through the earnings season and try to spot winners. Disk drive peripherals, those companies that make the gizmos that go with the techno-stuff you already own, were the only notable winners. The

American Stock Exchange Disk Drive Index

, a collection of these names, rose 1%.

Cisco was the most-actively traded stock on the Nasdaq and continued to get kicked in the teeth. It fell 3.4% to $30, making this the second-straight day of losses and the fourth losing session in five tries. This drags Cisco within a buck of its 52-week-low of $29.88. It could have been worse. It could have been more like yesterday, where Cisco dropped 12% on 282 million shares traded. No, that's not a typo -- that's 282 million shares -- the second-most heavily traded single issue in Nasdaq history.

Bonds/Economy

Treasury prices are lower in thin trading. The longer-dated securities are under greater supply-side pressure as the market awaits the auction of $10 billion worth of the 30-year bond. Dealers are selling in order to drive down the auction price.

The benchmark 10-year

Treasury note lately was down 2/32 to 99 8/32, yielding 5.097%.

In economic news, the

initial jobless claims

(

definition |

chart |

source

), which tracks the number of laid-off workers applying for unemployment benefits for the first time, rose for the third consecutive week. The bond market has already priced in this trend, however. There were 361,000 claims for the period ended Feb. 3, up from 346,000 the previous week. Economists polled by

Reuters

had forecast 348,000. The four-week moving average, considered the more reliable indicator of unemployment, rose to 331,250 from 327,000.